Mother's Day

 Well, we had a lovely meal yesterday.  Mind you, I should have asked for a Pensioner Portion as when it arrived it was enormous - a Sunday roast and 5 veg, piled high and topped with a big Yorkshire.  I chose lamb, and the girls had beef, and we asked for a small dish of chicken for Rosie.  She has a cold with a temperature, but managed some beef, which surprised Tam.  All the mums were given a little goody bag with a Lindor chocolate and complementary skin care samples.

This was the dessert - Rhubarb Frangipane tart with a Blood Orange sorbet hiding behind the slice of Blood Orange.  The jus was lovely too.  Really tasty and the prettiest dessert I've ever had.  Lovely staff too.  Definitely a pub to return to.

Rosie was pretty good and when she got fed up, we took it in turns to take her for walks up the pub (or rather, ran off after her!)

I was worried about her temperature but Tam said it broke around 4 a.m. and she began asking for food.  Phew.  You never know which way temperatures are going to go in little ones.  

Her leg . . . well, the final diagnosis was Reactive Arthritis!  This comes on from a tummy bug or from a chest infection/bad cold.  She's had plenty of nasty colds this winter.  She can't bend that leg because it hurts but it doesn't seem to slow her down and she can make good speed still, despite it.  It is due to bacteria from an infection getting into the joint and should gradually dissipate over the next 3 - 9 mths.  They will be seeing a specialist consultant, but may need to travel to Carmarthen for that.  A worry though.  We never realized that children that young could have arthritis.

She agrees with the cats, that boxes have more than one purpose!  I wondered where my washing up gloves got to . . .

I will have to go in search of cat food the cats will eat today.  I have 4 different types of biscuits, and Whiskas and Felix sachets but they are all being SO picky, especially Alfie who won't touch the specially bought Urinary care biscuits (£26 down the drain as they will go to the animal shelter now.)  No fish, they are telling me, meat in gravy only.  (Got Harringtons biscuits - we shall see.)

I had a lovely evening watching the latest video of Rewilding Jude -  I have to hand it to him, he's not afraid of hard work, and dismantling two big and fally-downy sheds was a challenge that took him a week.  Then I noticed that The Other Bennet Sister was finally airing - tempting snippets were first shown in December - and I watched the first three excellent episodes of that.

Granny Juice

 That, according to Rosie, is what my little bottle of wine is. Love it!

Tam and Rosie arrived yesterday, and we are meeting Gabby in Hay-on-Wye for a Mother's Day meal later.

This lovely book arrived yesterday and I began reading it straight away. I am really enjoying it .

It was sunny and warm yesterday and I cracked on clearing tussocks of Couch grass - by gum, they are stubborn.  Anyway, the last 4 Glen Doll raspberries are now planted and fed, and I put a load of muck heap on the Three Rhubarb plants .  Progress.  My garlic is coming on well. I utilised a broken storage box that Keith had used for militaria and put some drainage holes in the bottom. The garlic is hard neck garlic and said to plant in spring. I've always planted in winter before.

Right, this won't do. Need to get a bath and a hair wash and put the seats back up in the car and Rosie's car seat in.

Happy Mother's Day.

Rosie - discharged finally

 All tests and obs have come back clear so far.  Tam said that they are doing another blood test so has to wait for results from that.  They are being very thorough, but poor little Rosie, being jabbed again and again.  It is lunchtime now and they've been there nearly 24 hrs.  Update: bloods came back clear and they are discharged now.  Phew.  That was a long 24 hours, esp. for Tam who had hardly any sleep.

                                    *                 *            *

To distract me, I will share another extract from The Old Ways, this time about the place which fascinates and terrifies, the Broomway, a footpath which leads into the sea in a loop.  It has claimed many lives.  "It's a weird world out there on the flats," said Patrick (the acknowledged expert who knew every inch of it).  "Nothing looks  the same as normal.  Gulls can seem as big as eagles.  Scale and distance change.  It's very easy to lose your bearings, especially in dusk or dark.  Then it's the lights on the Kent shore that often do it.  People think they're walking back to the Essex coast, when in fact they're walking towards Kent and so out into the tide.  The mud's the thing to watch, too: step in the wrong places, and it'll bog you down and suck you in, ready for the tide to get you."  "Patrick had a final warning: "The Broomway will be there another day, but if you try to walk it in mist, you may not be.  So if it's misty when you arrive at Wakering Stairs, turn around and go home."  It was, of course, misty when McFarlane and his walking partner arrived, but they decided to risk it anyway . . .

"We stepped off the causeway.  The water was warm on the skin, puddling to ankle depth.  Underfoot I could feel the brain-like corrugations of the hard sand, so firmly packed that there was no give under the pressure of my step.  Beyond us extended the sheer mirror-plane of the water, disrupted only here and there by shallow humps of sand and green slews of weed." . . . . . . .  We walked on.  I could hear the man whistling to his dog, now far away on the sea wall.  Otherwise, there was nothing except bronze sand and mercury water, and so we continued walking through the lustrous air, onto onto the flats and back into the Mesolithic."    From The Old Ways - A Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane, publ. by Hamish Hamilton, 2012.

I have had a walk of my own this morning, whilst the sun was shining.  Just along the old railway line, a mile each way.  After yesterday's heavy rain, there was quite a lot of muddy water in the Wye.

  Someone has planted lots of Daffodils on their section of old railway line slope.

I'm not sure if this was a Witchazel?  Just a few yellow stamens were its flowers.

Anyway, when I came back it hailed (I was still in the car).  I had just begun to put my key in the door when there was an angry buzzing and I quickly withdrew the key and a very disgruntled bumble bee exited the keyhole!  Never had that before :)

I did some of the brim for my bobble hat, but am now sure if 25g was enough.  If not, it will be a short (inner) brim.  The colour is proving impossible to match and I can't find this particular wool anywhere so it was probably remaindered.  Ah well, if it does fall short I will have to replace it with 100 g ball in a colour I like.

Perhaps the strangest chapter I've ever read

 It's been blowing half a gale and chucking it down with rain all day today, so the furthest I have been is the compost heap!  Best to be inside looking out at it.  

This morning I was sat up in my sewing room, trying to select the best half square triangles for the table topper.  Some I unpicked and added an off white material to balance the design as I had sewn all the charm pack together using the off white print I had to balance the designs, until running out. Now I have unpicked a few which used up the plain fabrics -  green/yellow/lilac/dark red - and combined with some off white I had at home.

I was looking across to the woodland and desperately wishing for the first hints of green.  The Sycamore by the edge of the orchard has tiny green leaf-tips so perhaps more leaves aren't too far away.

Whilst watching the racing, I blew the dust off my Seaside Topper bobble hat and started the brim - which I should have worked first, but clearly wasn't paying attention at the time as I began it when Keith was so ill.    I will just sew it onto the top, no probs.  The wool I had bought from Wonderwool (with the pattern and John Arbon Devonia wool to knit this) for the brim was Sirdar and it kept breaking apart - I have about 6 knots in it so far.  I forgot to buy a 2nd 25g of it for the pompom so will try to match it.  I cast on too tightly first off, so had to rip it off and start again.  I need to do ten rows of stocking stitch. Hope to manage that today.  I have been trying to find a matching pair of buttons for Elderberry Bunny's eyes but despite having bought a couple of big bags of various size and colour buttons a few years back, finding a pair is difficult, and none in brown or black.  I can't find my big tin of buttons off clothes, which are nearly all brown, grey or black.  Into the cupboards tomorrow . . .

Now the title today refers to the chapter in Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways, which I have been listening to on Audible in the car.  I had only read perhaps half the book, so thought it would be nice to treat myself to it to listen to.  It is Chapter 8 - Gneiss.  Perhaps it isn't so much the content or subject of the chapter as the character, Steve, that it is written about.  I have to say he wouldn't be my choice as a partner in life, as no way could I live with this: (turn away if you are eating a meal or don't care for skeletons and remains).

"On the south-astern coast of the Isle of Harris, in a three-house village called Geocrab, behind a fuchsia hedge, in a chilly thin-walled workshop, hanging by a meat hook from a rafter is a human skeleton.  Its 206 bones are held together by sinews of braided sea-grass, which, as they pass through the vertebrae, are knotted alternately left over right and right over left.  Stitched onto the bones are patches of meat cut from a dead calf, which together form a rough over-body.  At the time of their first sewing - when they had been recently preserved using a solution of formaldehyde and sodium fluoride, administered with a horse syringe and prepared according to a mix-ratio perfected by the members of a mid-1920s zoological expedition to the Amazon - the meat patches were still plumply muscular."   The Old Ways, Robert Macfarlane, published by Hamish Hamilton, 2012.  This chapter continues writing about Steve and his artistic endeavours and ideas and he sounds a most unusual person.  His end game plan for this skeleton is to take the top off of a giant boulder, hollow it out, hang the skeleton inside and then put the top back on.  An idea so challenging it sounds almost impossible.  

So, with this book, I am realizing how humdrum my life is by comparison, and my utter ignorance about some of the people and places Macfarlane mentions. At least I am on the same page when he writes/speaks of Edward Thomas and am completely linked up and educated about his poetry, prose and character.

Anyway, spare a thought for Tam tonight as she has been at the Hospital with Rosie since lunchtime, as Rosie has a very bad limp (swollen knee) and the GP thought it needed checking out as she had been sore on that leg before.  I hope that nothing nasty has been found . . .  

Lamb Snow and gymkhanas in my youth . . .

 I had a busy morning, first of all trying to get through town - it only took 25 minutes! - they were trimming branches on the Giant Redwoods at the entrance to the carpark in the Groe - so two rows of traffic had to merge into one, and then the left hand lane (me) had to wait whilst there was a 3 way traffic light operating at the roundabout on the Llanelwedd side of the bridge.  I was late for my appointment at the Tip, but they didn't mind, bless them.  I had asked for help and  didn't have to move anything much as they were taking out all the shattered fence and rubble etc.  I just took a few hard plastic bits to recycle.

Here is my Georgian candle box (and yes, that is a scorpion shaped hook it's hanging off - Keith bought that!)  

Inside, a few candles (they were my mum's and she died in 2007!) and matches.  Waste not, want not.  I have a load more in the cupboard.

I parked up to go to the PO in Llandod, and take a couple of books to the charity shop.  I fell into conversation with a woman (farmer's wife) about the weather - as you do!  I said I hoped it wasn't going to snow, as had been predicted.  She said it might well and called it the "Lamb Snow" - e.g. it waited until you had finished lambing and had plenty of nice young lambs out in the field, before falling and causing angst.

I spent the afternoon watching the racing and writing one last letter that I owed a friend.  We started off as penpals, and met up several times, but down the years our letters had dwindled to just one at Christmas.  She wrote at Christmas this year and asked if I wanted to start writing again as several of her lifetime penpals had died in the last year or two.  So we are penpals again and I am hoping that penpal extinction doesn't get me just yet!

She used to run little gymkhanas on their land and my friend Gay and I used to go down and help.  One year they had a helper's race and I was persuaded to ride a little skewbald in the beer-drinking race :)  I didn't win it!

I was there in the capacity of judge too.  Oh gosh, there was one pony turned up that was lame.  I took the child riding it to one side and told her to stand there as her pony was lame.  The parents didn't believe me and she entered every class (and I did the same in each), but right at the end, when the poor pony was being forced to jump, I had to practically drag it out of the ring and the parents finally conceded that it might be a bit lame . . .

There was another pony, NOT a looker, which was entered in the showing classes - which are judged by the pony's conformation (shape) and way of going.  Well, this pony had the head of a Shire on the body of an ill-shaped pony.  It was NOT pretty.  In each class, I put it well down the line.  In the final class I was confronted by an irate handbag-wielding mother:  "You don't like my daughter's pony do you?"  I had to reply, "Well no, it is a peculiar shape and has a head like a bucket and this is not the ideal class to enter it for"!  Happy days :)

I bought some more mince today and made a Chilli for tea (and subsequently).  Once again, the tomatoes tasted strange and I had to force it down and have put the rest in the freezer for when Tam is here, and she can take it home with her.  Since that bug I had, cooked tomatoes just don't taste as they should.  Nor do my curries.  I shall have to change my repertoire.

Busy in the greenhouse

 

It needs a tidy up and the glass scrubbed down, but it is starting to warm up in there and the plants I put in there when it was colder, are doing nicely.  The Hollyhocks were £5 the pair from Tesco, and the Lupins 3 for £12 at the Old Railway Line garden centre.  The seedlings in the centre are Lupins at the back and a tall white perennial I bought Tam the seeds for from Old Bladbean Stud Gardens (I follow them on Facebook).  Their seeds are really sensibly priced and I have lots more to start.  I chose Phlomis Russelliana and Phlomis Tuberosa from the little brown envelopes that Tam had put some seeds in for me.

Other seeds started are two trays of Scarlet Emperor Runner Beans (that is the sort I have grown all my gardening life).  Cosmos - Sulphur (which is a dye plant too), Seashells mixed and Double Click Cranberry.  Scabious, double mixed; Echinacea Hot Papaya - not sure if there were more than two seeds in the little bag of them which has been in the fridge all winter - they need chilling and I didn't know this when I sewed some last year.  I hope they come anyway, but it looked like I had chaffy seed-outers rather than actual seeds (bought on Fleabay).  Then lastly tall Delphiniums (also from Old Bladbean Stud Gardens).  

I didn't go off the premises today as I had a gippy tummy earlier on - it hasn't been quite right since my, ahem, procedure last week, so I guess it will take a while to settle down.  

However, as a positive I did find out how to watch the Cheltenham Festival (horse racing) on my tv.  Since giving Sky up I have had to look for live tv programmes on the Apps for various channels, which is not straightforward.  I have scarcely watched any racing on tv since for this reason and because it reminded me that Keith was no longer here.  He watched racing regularly and if I wasn't busy, I would sit down with him.  We always really looked forward to Cheltenham, and seeing the best steeplechasers and hurdlers in the country competing against one another.  So I spent the afternoon writing a letter to a friend and watching the racing.  Plus I baked a new-to-me cake - an apple gingerbread one using 2 chopped fresh dessert apples instead of cooked apple puree and using treacle instead of syrup.  It is cooling now.  I also baked a loaf which didn't work out as it should - a half and half rye and white flour one.  It didn't rise well but it tastes ok.  I had to guess at the setting as the one it said, on my Panasonic, was going to take SIX HOURS!  So my fault entirely, but I put it on a setting which gave 3 1/2 hrs which is how long it said it should take.

I will nip into Tesco tomorrow, after the Tip (which is just behind Tesco), and get more cat food - they won't eat the fish variety at the moment - and a shopping list 5 lines long for me.  Oh, and a bottle of wine for when the girls are here at the weekend (Mother's Day on Sunday, when we are going out for our meal in Hay-on-Wye.)

Mopre racing tomorrow afternoon so I will carry on with my embroidery.

The delights of . . .

A glimpse of summer (in NZ).

... a car full of absolute crap to take to the Tip for Tam.  It's the remains of their old fence, taken out by Storm Darragh.  I have an absolute pile of junk to add to it, and have requested the aid of a useful tip worker when I arrive.  I will load up my pile of junk tomorrow - unless the forecast is heavy rain, in which case it's best to load it today whilst it's dry.  Wednesday is the earliest I can take it (unless I book in at Brecon, which is a 40 mile round trip, so Wednesday and so Llandod it is).  With the cost of fuel so high, I have to stay close to home.

I was awake at 5.45 this morning and got up.  Now of course, I am feeling tired (4 1/2 hrs later).  I have just been round the kitchen, utility and hall and lower stairs with the vacuum cleaner and my back is now complaining.  Before I rest though I want to get seeds sown in seed trays and put on the south-facing wide windowsill in my sewing room.  One of the things that gets me feeling low this time of year, is jobs not done. I am SO FED UP with constant grey skies day after day - it's as bad as rain. 

Chicken pie tonight I think.  Update: couldn't be bothered to make the pastry so I had a chicken risotto instead.

I have not an iota of energy - I used up the last I had going up the track to bring the wheelie bin back.  But my fault entirely as I have just snacked today and not had a proper meal and very little protein.  Since Keith died, I find it very hard to plan meals, let alone enjoy eating them and my portion size has shrunk so I normally just have a bowl and not a dinner plate.

Positives for the day:

Heard back from my bowel screening that nothing was amiss.

Car all loaded ready to go to the Tip. I will be SO glad to get it emptied and the back of the car scrubbed down.  The wet wood makes it smell very fousty.

Recycling done and dusted for another week.